"The spoils of our hunt have finally arrived," said the man with the baseball bat.
He was shorter than the northerners and not as heavily built, yet he carried that merciless, feral look in his eyes, the kind you only ever see in killers and hunters. The kind that makes your skin crawl...
As if eager to show off teeth he sharpened by tearing through the tough hides of whatever he'd hunted, he bared his crooked fangs as he spoke. Then spun the baseball bat in his hand, slamming its end against the ground with each turn.
His eyes never left me. He examined every inch of me, piece by piece.
I could feel the dominance he was trying to impose, but it was nothing like the dominance of the alphas I'd encountered before.
This was foreign, feral, and threatening. When the sensation began to creep into something that felt almost like being violated, discomfort twisted in my stomach.
But I refused to let him overpower me.
The tension between us was so intense that the others sensed it too. The wolves began to growl and move toward me.
Just then, the young man stepped in front of me, blocking my view.
"This woman is the future mate of the north's next leader. Do you have any idea what you've done? Once this comes to light, not only the north and south packs but even the Moon Goddess will punish you!"
The young man's thunderous voice seemed to have no effect at all. The man holding the baseball bat let out a short laugh, the kind that sounded filthy and insincere, as if he were forcing himself to find something funny.
"If you think we give a damn about the north's leader or your so called future heir, do you really believe we wouldn't attack his precious bride to be? Use your head for once, boy."
While they were busy trying to assert dominance over one another, I turned to Atia.
"Atia, what happened here?" I asked, lifting a hand to her cheek. She flinched slightly at my touch.
"We… While we were on the road, people from the western pack cut us off. The driver got out to talk to them… but that man… he struck him in the head with the baseball bat… Everything happened so fast."
Atia began to cry as she quietly recounted the events. Remembering it made her whole body tremble even more.
I rose from where I was kneeling, took the thin blanket from my shoulders, and wrapped it around her.
"Wait here." I didn't let her stop me as I walked up to the young man. "Who do you think you are to block our way?" I shouted, drawing everyone's attention to me.
"I'm here to steal you, babe."
The man from the western pack, the one holding the baseball bat, answered instantly, stretching his mouth into a lazy grin. He once again swept his eyes over me from head to toe.
It wasn't hard to guess.
The westerners had come here to sabotage the potential peace between the north and the south. Because a marriage between the two packs would only strengthen them compared to the west and the east.
And especially when the groom was the north's future leader, they must have feared that such a union would shatter the balance of power among the four regions.
With a mocking smile on my face, "Since you attack people without warning, it seems you don't have that capacity." I said.
The smirk on his face vanished within seconds and his jaw tightened.
Then suddenly, at a speed I couldn't even process, he lunged at me, his hand shooting to my throat as he yanked me toward him.
I hadn't even had time to react; the moment he pulled me in, my feet lifted off the ground. My eyes widened in shock, and I tried to cough against the crushing pressure on my throat, but my breath was cut off.
"Almila! No…!" Atia screaming my name behind me seemed to make the pain in my throat even sharper.
Right beside me, the young northerner reached out to grab me, but the wolves pounced on him, sinking their teeth into his body. Blood beginning to pool on the snowy ground, I shuddered, and my teeth started to itch.
That familiar smell of blood from the northerners, which wasn't entirely foreign to me... As this smell began to fill my nose, I looked at the westerner who hadn't taken his eyes off me. A nasty grin settled on his face again.
"You don't look as brave as your words…" he said, and then his gaze slipped from my eyes, trailing downward. "But I'm sure there are many places where you could be useful."
I had realized for a while now that I was trying to shift. The nails on my fingers had grown a little, sharpened slightly. But I was still struggling to control my power.
The energy gathering in different parts of my body wasn't converging into a single point. Instead, it scattered in multiple directions.
I felt it everywhere, from the tips of my toes to the roots of my hair, but without being able to shift properly, all that power was useless to me.
Failing to do it at such a critical moment made me feel weak.
But the moment I understood the meaning behind this mutt's words, as if something clicked, I thrust my open hand straight into the center of his chest.
I moved my hand so quickly that I tore into his body, ripping off a piece of his skin along with flesh.
Just as I was about to pull my hand back, he realized what I was doing, threw me to the ground, and quickly backed away.
The moment my body hit the snowy ground, I pushed myself back up and tried to breathe. Since he'd been choking me for a while, the sudden rush of air into my lungs made me cough.
"Fucking bitch…" he snarled.
One of his hands flew to his chest, clutching the spot I'd nearly torn open. Blood had already begun to spill from the wound I'd ripped into him.
As he pulled back further and whispered something to the others, they began moving toward me. When I saw the wolves getting close, I shot one last look at Atia, who was still shouting my name, and then I started to run.
I ran with everything I had. Each time I glanced over my shoulder, I saw the wolves gaining on me.
Even in my normal form, I was one of the fastest alphas in my pack, but matching the speed of alphas in full wolf form was nearly impossible.
So the moment I darted into the forest, I headed for the places their massive bodies wouldn't be able to squeeze through.
A wolf was about to claw my leg, I jumped between two trees standing almost side by side and kept running. It slammed its body into a tree and staggered.
The other one was still behind me, approaching almost right up to me, coming from a different path.
I kept running, it felt as if my heartbeat had burst out of my chest, and all I could hear was the rhythm of my pulse in my ears and the snarling of the wolf right behind me.
There was no doubt anymore, they wanted me dead. Even the mere possibility of the north and south joining must have terrified them enough to hunt me down before the marriage ever happened.
I couldn't die this easily.
Not when there were still so many things I had to do.
Because of that, I kept running. I pushed myself harder and harder, widening the distance between me and the wolf chasing me. Soon, I couldn't feel my soles, then my legs at all, but I didn't stop.
Unfortunately, things didn't unfold the way I'd hoped.
My steps gradually slowed, because the path ahead ended in a cliff.
I couldn't slow down fast enough, so when I reached the edge of the cliff, I barely managed to stop.
The wolf behind me had slowed as well, and when I halted at the edge of the cliff, he began approaching in steady, deliberate steps.
I turned and met his eyes.
In those merciless, hunger-lit eyes, eyes that looked at me the way a predator looks at its prey, there wasn't a single drop of pity.
I couldn't die here. Not like this.
I tried to assert dominance over him, tried one last time to shift, but it was useless.
I reached back with one foot to feel for space, but I realized there truly was nowhere left to go.
The ground, fragile under the slightest pressure, cracked with a sharp snap and broke apart, several pieces tumbling down into the ocean lying hundreds of meters below.
I didn't feel like doing anything at that moment.
The reality of dying like this hit me in the face, and the more it sank in, the more I refused to accept it.
I didn't want to allow myself such an ending. So I took a deep breath.
The wolf before me lunged forward and opened its jaws toward my face, and I reached out, grabbed its throat, and clenched down hard.
Using every ounce of strength I had left, I managed to hurl its body to the side.
But its counterattack came fast.
It clamped its jaws around my arm and bit down from my wrist to my elbow, tearing into me.
As I felt every bone in that arm shatter, a scream ripped out of me, and I kicked its body hard as I could.
Its body staggered again, but it didn't take long for it to rise and come at me once more.
I no longer cared about the cliff behind me.
The only thing on my mind was finding a way to overpower this wolf.
I could feel my arm starting to heal, but since I wasn't in wolf form, it was clear it would take time.
I managed to dodge when it lunged at me and tried to bite my leg. But then something happened that I wasn't expecting.
The wolf in front of me suddenly lowered its head to the ground, pushing its ears back.
It began making sounds like it was whining, backing away from me.
As I frowned and tried to understand what was happening, I took a step forward, but the world darkened for a moment. I staggered.
It only lasted a second, but in that second I sensed the sudden spread of the pheromones in the air.
It was a scent that slipped into my nose, left a sweet taste on my tongue, made my mouth water and brought tears to my eyes, a scent that seeped into my mind and clouded my thoughts.
My heart began beating faster than before, faster than it ever had in my life, and my body trembled lightly.
My teeth sharpened in my mouth, and I lifted a hand to the back of my neck, scratching at my skin with my nails as it started to itch.
The allure of the scent was unbearable.
I had never encountered pheromones that affected me this much before. No pheromone had ever embraced my body like this, wanting to claim me, nor had any ever made me crave it in return.
This scent slipping into my nose and spreading through my entire body made me feel as if I were floating among the clouds in the sky.
Minty, fresh, yet sharply seductive.
Even though I began scratching my nape hard, it only kept itching more and more.
Who was the owner of these pheromones? And why was my body reacting like this?
Even though I questioned all of this, I couldn't find an answer at that moment.
When I noticed the warm liquid dripping from my nose down to my lip, I brought my hand up to it. And when I pulled my hand away, what I saw was my own blood.
Dark, heavy on my fingertip, yet strangely carrying the scent of my own pheromones. Red apple. Just like the meaning of my name, an apple scent.
These two pheromones mingled in the air.
At that moment, I lost all balance and staggered back, trying to stay on my feet.
But when one of my feet landed on empty air, I began to fall. I didn't even realize I had fallen off the cliff.
My body met the water moments later, and I felt a deep pain first on my back, then throughout my entire body.
The force of the fall dragged me all the way down to the bottom of the water. But I couldn't control my body or swim upward.
That pheromone's influence was still coursing through me.
Without realizing it, even underwater I tried to draw the scent in deeper. Because of that, the ocean water rushed into my nose and left me breathless.
The last thing I saw before my eyes closed was the man who suddenly dove into the water.
His black hair and dark brown skin shone like a moon in the ocean depth, and his eyes were as blue as the ocean itself.
He effortlessly gathered my body into his arms, and I felt as though I were exactly where I belonged.